


Second Chances

by snappy606



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adalai is my fucking baby and hes my favorite to write because hes just like that., Alcohol, I wrote this a while ago and perhaps I shall continue it, M/M, Ty isnt my oc, bitches be drinkin, bitches be dyin, not permanently tho, this an au of their canon.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 18:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snappy606/pseuds/snappy606
Summary: I probably wont finish this.





	1. Chapter 1

She towered over him like a great blue skyscraper, her indigo features blending seamlessly into clouds of jet black hair. Dozens of eyes swirled around her flesh. Her skin was not skin, rather, it appeared to be… slime? It oozed from her frame, as though she were a corpse consumed by ravenous rot. His lip curled, another eye bubbled to the surface. She stood like she was waiting for someone to arrive.

He had never seen someone like that before. Of the four eyes on her face, only three regarded him. The fourth, affixed to the center of her forehead stared blankly ahead. More of her dripped to the floor. He had to be dreaming.

Standing next to to the monstrous woman, Adalai looked a bit plain- very unusual for the boy. Dark brown curly hair framed his eyes, but flared out around his neck, coming to a stop just before his shoulders. He wore an ostentatious white faux fur jacket, letting it artfully drape off his exposed shoulder. Skin a dark, clear, caramel color, save for a light dust of freckles on his face, and a mole beneath his left eye. 

The pair stood facing one another, adversaries in a way only the human could feel. Adalai was on the defense. His memory of the night was fuzzy. He frowned, positive he had been drunk at some point. They stood atop a hill in the middle of a field. The grass was dead, tall and tan. As the land went further and further, it all seemed to desaturate. It was silent. The air was still. The sky hung heavy above them. A dull black brown void. Not a single star shone in it’s empty depths.

It was eerie, Adalai thought, rubbing his throat. A troublesome itch burning near the base. The stale air must be aggravating it, he thought.

“I’m so sick of waiting for him..” She sounded tired, “Adalai darling, your time on earth is over.” Her tone was sympathetic but stiff, like she was reading from a script, “It is time for you to go.” She extended a goopy hand towards him. Adalai recoiled, swatting her hand away.

“Excuse me? ” Disdain colored his voice, “No, this is some sick joke. Or -or drug induced nightmare.” Not that he did drugs to begin with, but you never know. Confusion flashed in his eyes for a briefly before he squashed it again, “Its  _ just  _ like me to think up some shit like this- You look like they commissioned an oil painting of The Corpse Bride from some barely talented surrealist painter.” Adalai drew his hand up to his face, shielding his impish laughter, “Sorry -so sorry.” 

The woman’s face contorted. Unused to the mockery, her placid attitude bleeding into anger. His insolence tired her. 

Her gaze bore into him. 

He looked anywhere else. 

He had been at a party earlier that night.

If he closed his eyes he could still see the cheap strobe lights flashing over the stained frat house walls. A white leather couch covered in the forms of half-drunk college students- his classmates. Tinny music blasted incoherently from speakers that had long since been blown out. The singer’s dulcet tones fading in and out in a cacophony of static. Most partygoers were too drunk to care- himself included.

Red solo cup in hand, he made his way through the menagerie of twisting bodies, batting away every stray touch. He ignored the girl calling his name from the middle of the crowd. Feinted left to dodge the gaze of an old friend. Familiar feelings of displacement and disgust burrowed into his chest, it all felt too close. 

Situating himself on the outskirts of the fray, Adalai leaned into the sweat slicked wall with a shudder- the lengths he went to in order to keep up an image. He stood with one hip jutted out to the side. A doll-like expression painted on his face, Adalai stared blankly out into the circus on the dancefloor. He did not want to be here.

A boy called to him then, a redhead Adalai knew intimately, and loathed ferociously. He made a crude gesture. His ex smiled back. Adalai looked away.

The blue woman spoke again, tearing him from his flashback and into the present. Unleashing her wrath upon him, her once smooth voice shifting to crackling ice, 

“Pathetic. You do not need to recall every moment of that party, Your obsession with self distraction is so tiring.” Pausing for a moment, parroting his smug laughter from before,“ That party ended with your head several feet from your corpse.” She sounded terribly bored. “You may be dead, but remember your place, boy. What I can do to you is not attached to mortality.” Adalai flinched and stepped back, closing his eyes as she continued. “Your sister will be the one to find you. She wanted to make amends- but will regret her words for the rest of her life.”

No. Not her, for all Andromeda’s faults, Adalai knew she was soft. His twin was the girl who hid in the kitchen with the dog at partys. She spent her days off exploring used bookstores. She cried after fights. And the last thing he had done was slam the door in her face. Seeing any kind of death made her ill- Seeing his death would crush her. 

Closing his eyes, he relived the end of that night.

The music was too loud, it was always too loud at parties. Adalai pressed himself further against that dull brown wall, grimacing at the grime and sweat soaking into his nice jacket. A stray body from the dance floor approached him. Blurriedly smiling at the boy on the wall, the dancer grabbed Adalai’s arm and pulled him into the throng of writhing limbs. 

He did his best to push away from the boy, but he had already got a grip on Adalai’s waist. Trapped, he thought. That awful music poured in around him, too loud to hear the whispers. Too loud to hear the crack of Adalai’s hand against the boy’s cheek. 

The ruddy faced dancer stepped back, dazed for a moment. As if he could not believe what had just happened. A thin red line appeared on his cheek. A dot of blood pooled to the surface. For a split second, Adalai stood frozen, grateful for his long nails. The surprise faded.

He watched the boy’s face contort. Confusion had turned to anger. Adalai hid his apprehension well. Straightening his posture, he was somehow able to stare down his nose at the much taller boy. Something derogatory was said. Adalai looked away.

The upstairs of the frat house was all but empty. Save for the single door at the end of the hall with a tin ‘Do NOT Disturb’ sign hanging from the doorknob by a red ribbon looped through the top corners. He had come upstairs for an escape.

The door cracked open noiselessly, Adalai stepped in and shut it behind him. It was dark. Blackout curtains had been drawn, covering all but a sliver of light from the street. The muffled thump of the blasted speakers downstairs shook the room. His hands shook, Adalai let out a shaky breath. 

Adalai did not notice the door open and shut behind him. He inhaled, pulling as much as he could into his lungs. A car passed by, sliding a thin bar of light through the room. Illuminating, for just a moment, the two men within. 

His attacker gave him no time to think. Lunging at Adalai the instant the light had faded. The alcohol in his system muddied his movements. Tangling arms, Kicking legs. Both boys wrestled for control. Hands entangled themselves in his curly hair. He screamed. But nobody below heard his head slam into the hardwood. What was one more knock in the music, what was a beat out of place? 

Dazed, on his stomach, his breath was cut short. Something cold coiled around his neck. Pulling tight. Then tighter.

Then it broke skin. 

Another car passed by.

He was jerked back. The pressure made it hard to breathe. Vaguely, Adalai became aware of a tingling sensation in his neck. It was too dark to see. Something wet flowed past his shoulders. He hoped it wouldn't leave a stain. 

The cord cut deeper. 

And deeper.

His head hit the floor with a muffled thump. 

Sets of eyes glared back at him. Drawing Adalai back towards the present, she shifted her gelatinous features into a mask of stern sympathy.

“I always insist we personally deal with trauma victims. But for you I might make an exception.”

Grass rustled at their feet. Silence hung in the air. Adalai sunk to his knees. There were no self-help books on death- how to cope with it. No chicken soup for the dearly departed soul, nobody told him that there was loss in being lost.

No annoying sisters to barge into his bedroom, launching into a hyperbolized rant about ‘That stupid bitch Natalie’ on her tennis team. He’d never finish that mural on his bedroom wall, the one he’d repainted 11 times that year alone. Never find true love. 

The woman stared at him levelly, he loathed how unreadable she was. He watched a chunk of flesh drip from her arm into the grass, listening to the schlick of it as it oozed back into her feet. They were surrounded by waves of dry grass, it seemed to go on forever, Adalai thought. Like a 99 cent postcard advertising the middle of nowhere. The empty sky loomed overhead, he tried not to think about it.


	2. Chapter 2

A crack resounded in the air.  
“SAADIE!”  
An avalanche of smoke poured in from behind him. Introducing a new voice, low and raspy, belonging to a man.. The air now smelled of petrichor. Adalai wondered briefly, who Sadie was, but soon found his answer in the woman in front of him. Still on the ground, he took the moment of Sadie’s distraction to crawl to the side of her and gaze into the slowly clearing smoke.  
The man who stepped out looked like a caricature of a douchebag. Clad in black pinstripe pants, and an racously yellow and red graphic tee. Liquid gold fell from his eyes in an endless stream of tears. The ensemble could of course, only be completed by the dozens of watches covering his arms, from wrist to where his sleeve ended. Flashing a serrated smile, he kept his eyes on Adalai but lifted his head to address Sadie.  
“Aw Comeee onnnn! Sadie you know I love dealing with the drunk college kids!”  
A thick strand of black saliva fell from full, ink-black lips. He slurped it back up. Adalai stifled a gag, but stayed silent. Catching the exchange between the two beings. He glared at Sadie when she spoke,  
"Ty, I hate you. I hate being around you- Is it that much of a surprise that I tried to get him without you? Adalai hated having to learn names like this- listening to their conversation in order to discover a piece of information he barely cared about. He just wanted to go home.  
Like a game of table tennis, he watched the two creatures argue back and forth, their words swelling in the air around him.  
“Aw come off it Sads.. you could never hate me!”  
“I do, I really do.” Sadie pinched the bridge of her nose, Adalai watched, mesmerized, as the flesh from her fingers fused into her face. The dripping sludge from her arm fell into her mouth as she spoke, garbling her placid voice, “I already know you’re planning something just to spite me.”  
Ty gasped, “How’d you guess?” His tone dripping sarcasm. Cackling, he turned towards Adalai. Who met his gaze defiantly, narrowing his eyes at the being.  
“So is it ‘Ad-a-leigh’ or ‘Ad-al-eye?” Something boyish crossed over Ty’s face, he scratched the back of his head and continued, “ I’m not omniscient like Sadie - she’s a freak - it’s why she's melting.” A glob of navy slime shot from Sadie’s arm and splatted in Ty’s hair at that remark. Adalai snickered.  
“It’s Ad-a-leigh.” Good lord, he was in high school all over again. Even in death, Adalai still remembered the countless substitutes butchering his name. The droll in his voice worsened with each correction, “So, what-”  
Ty cut him off, his words forcing Adalai to pay attention once again, “Sadie sucks- She’s awful with people .” He glanced towards the woman, watching the amusement dance across her features, “and also gross” . Ty’s words held no real malice to her, Adalai realized. They acted more like siblings than strangers.  
“Anyways, she and I are Reapers, responsible for the collection and distribution of human souls-”  
“Where's the cloak?” Adalai questioned.  
“Where’s the what?”  
“You know, the Reaper cloak?”  
Ty looked incredulous for a moment, blinking a few times as if he could not believe this human was asking such a stupid question. Or so Adalai thought until he laughed. The reaper’s expression twisted for a moment, a dance of intrigue and excitement, “Don’t you think that's a little derogatory? You just think that all reapers wear cloaks? In this day and age?”  
Adalai paused to consider for a moment, he’d had more important things to think about in life, and had never taken a moment to ponder whether the reaper actually wore a cloak - or that there was more than one of them besides. If werewolves were real, were they ever offended by the mangy shirtless caricatures of them branded across all popular media?  
Ty continued talking, picking up where he had stopped off in Adalai’s diversion, “Anyways, I - and Sadie here - were going to take you to that spicy afterlife all you humans crave..” Furrowing his brows, the reaper attempted to jog his memory, “..Er.. Valhalla? No, Xibalba…” He groaned, “ Aw- What the hell was it?” Ty looked to Sadie for help, but the indigo woman gave an agitated shrug. “Aw - WHATEVER! It’s all the same - Ad-a-leigh! Todays your lucky day! Because you aren’t going to die!”  
That rhymed. Adalai realized, huffing out a single stagnant laugh. Until… until he realized what Ty had just said to him. That had to be a joke, there's no coming back from decapitation.

A screech erupted from Sadie, “You know we can’t do that, Ty. What are you thinking? Just take the thing to the.. To the..”  
Ty paid her no mind, already twisting back the counter on one of his watches. She stomped an oozing foot against the ground, impact ending in a subdued slap against the grass as she splattered. “You’re a stubborn creature, Well, whatever comes of it, I give you no blessing. The others will know I had no hand in this.” Venom soaked her words, she only offered a glare towards the two men as she sunk into the dry dead earth.  
Adalai watched her leave, eyes stuck on the ground as the last of her bubbled up and sank in. He turned towards Ty, silent, for no words could be given. His questions plastered on his face. The remaining reaper did not look at him, training his eyes on his watch.  
“Man, I dunno why she’s acting like I’ll get in trouble. We don’t have bosses.. atleast not anymore- and the others... I’m stronger than they are anyways.” Adalai pursed his lips, grateful for the reaper’s kindness, yet skeptical of his motivations.  
His lamentations from earlier hung over his head. Adalai had a second chance to make it all okay. See his sister again, maybe make some new friends - and mend some fences with old ones. This was a little more than a near death experience. A roller coaster of uncharted feelings.  
Ty finished with his watch and grinned again, baring his shark teeth at the human, “There's a catch, of course - always a catch”  
“Am I doomed to run around like a headless chicken for the rest of my life?” The thought genuinely terrified him. Just let me die, he thought. If Ty was to make him the next Ichabod Crane - Adalai shuddered at the thought. Silence hung in the air.  
“Are you doomed to what? No! Gods no! You gotta check that nihilism Ada-al-eye!” The reaper cackled with a voice like sandpaper. He paused as though to consider Adalai’s headless fate, “As hilarious as that would be…  
“No, I rewound time to just after the incident. I’m relocating the injury as well: seven gashes on your chest - guaranteed nonlethal! Doctors will say its a miracle you survived…. I can’t undo your assault, however. Can’t rewrite human nature.”  
“Are you kidding me? I’m grateful of course but... but...” Adalai looked at him like he was crazy, “Ty, hospital bills are crippling! You can’t do that to me - I work minimum wage!”  
“They’ll be covered. Adalai this isn't a random boon - ok, maybe it is a little, Sadie pissed me off - you’re going to be working for me - with me. Easy work… I promise” Ty blew a raspberry and continued his speech, “I’ll give you the ability to sense the spirits I, and my companions have missed on earth, and it’ll be your job to help me collect them.” Ty threw his hand to the side, as if to swat something unseen from the air, “You’re charismatic - probably… I don’t know you.”  
Adalai pursed his lips, then chuckled as though it all were a joke, “So you’re bringing me back to be your glorified janitor?” Ty nodded cheekishly. Running a hand through his curls, Adalai feigned to not notice how his hand snagged in them “Wow.. I really can’t afford to refuse- can I?”  
Ty tapped the surface of his watch three times and shook his head to signal no. “Naah… Oh, and Adalai? This is really important.”  
“What?”  
“Make sure to put some cool emojis next to my name in your phone. Cause I’ll be in touch.”  
Before Adalai had a chance to process the absurdity of that request, Ty winked and the world faded to white.


End file.
